The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman - Laurence Sterne [322]
2. tabid: wasted, but with overtones of corrupted and decomposed.
3. Priapus: The Greek and Roman god of procreation and gardens, with his erect phallus, would have been very familiar in the form of garden ornaments.
4. but where am I? … the midst of my days: another echo of Burton in a sexual context (1.3.2.4, 204; cf. VI, xxix, n. 3), first noted by Ferriar, 1:114, combined with a biblical echo (Psalms 102:24): “take me not away in the midst of my days.…”
CHAP. XV
1. thill-horse: the shaft horse, as opposed to the lead horse.
2. Ailly au clochers … AMIENS: A clocher is a bell tower. Sterne has “Hixcourt” for “Flixcourt.”
CHAP. XVI
1. avance-courier: An avant-courier is a forerunner (French).
2. livres … twelve sous piece of Louis XIV … liards: The French livre, roughly equivalent to the franc, was a coin originally worth a pound of silver. The sou and the liard were coins taken proverbially as worth very little. A liard, the smallest French coin, was worth one quarter of a sou, which was worth one twentieth of a livre. Coins from earlier kings’ reigns could not be used.
3. Monsieur le Curè: properly, Curé; the parish priest (French).
4. shaveling: a tonsured monk.
5. stables of Chantilly: Built by Jean Aubert for Louis Henri de Bourbon, seventh Prince de Condé, and completed in 1735, they housed two hundred and forty horses.
6. Judas’s lantern: This supposed relic (see John 18:3, which mentions the “lanterns and torches” of the “band of men and officers” who have come to arrest Jesus) was among the treasures of the medieval Abbey Church of St. Denis in Paris. Tristram’s attitude is typical of English anti-Catholicism, including Sterne’s own. Sterne will problematize similar attitudes on Yorick’s part in Sentimental Journey.
CHAP. XVII
1. calamanco: a glossy wool with one side showing checks or stripes.
2. no one gives the wall: To “give the wall” was to show respect or courtesy by walking oneself near (or in) the mud of the gutter while one’s companion walked close to the building.
3. god is their belly: Philippians 3:19.
4. the periwig maketh the man: a play on “clothes maketh the man,” a proverbial phrase with a counterpart in Hamlet, “the apparel oft proclaims the man” (1.3.72).
5. Capitouls: New suggests that Sterne alludes to their infamous role, publicized by Voltaire, in condemning the Huguenot Jean Calas to die at the stake in 1762 and executing him after breaking him on the wheel.
6. pardi: literally, “By God!” (French, from par Dieu), though milder.
7. wear swords: According to the sumptuary laws, only gentlemen were permitted to wear swords.
CHAP. XVIII
1. grand Hôtels: palaces of nobles (French).
2. Lilly: from the definition of “noun” at the beginning of William Lily and John Colet, A Short Introduction of Grammar, which appeared in many editions from 1549.
3. last survey: Florida notes verbatim use of Germain Brice, Description de la ville de Paris (Paris, 1752), 1:38–39. Sterne accidentally picked up the wrong date from this book, but knowingly goes against the stress there on the number of lanterns lighting the streets.
4. Sulplice: properly, “Sulpice.”
5. PARIS IS: roughly translated from the Latin in the note.
CHAP. XIX
1. spleen: See IV, xxii, n. 1.
2. undercraft: The last example in the OED of this term for “a sly, underhand trick”; not in Johnson.
3. Fontainbleau: properly “Fontainebleau”; a palace located forty miles southeast of Paris, rebuilt with extraordinary artistic opulence by François I during the Renaissance. See ch. xxvii.
CHAP. XX
1. consideratis, considerandis: literally, “the things to be considered having been considered”: “all things considered” (Latin).
2. bed-chamber … parlour: Cf. Sterne on Sentimental Journey: “the women will read this book in the parlour, and Tristram in the bed-chamber” (Letters, 412).
3. volving: Sterne’s is the last example in the OED of this obsolete usage for “revolving in the mind, considering.”
4. that ear … lend me: alludes to the beginning of Marc Antony